What’s New, St. John XXIII?

October 2016

75 Edey St reet , Arnpr ior , ON K7S 1B9 Phone: (613) 623-2828

Pr inc ipal : Heidi Fraser Emai l : hf raser@rccdsb.edu.on.ca

September Open House Open House on Wednesday, Sept. 21st was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who came

out to visit the various classrooms.

Vision Statement: Inspired by our rich heritage and inspired by the struggles of our past, we at St. John XXIII

Catholic School are called to express our mission as church, to pass on the good news of Jesus Christ, to

make it relevant in the world today and to be the hope for the future.

A Thanksgiving Prayer

Generous and loving God, our hearts overflow with grati-

tude as we celebrate your unending goodness to us. May we

always remember who has given us everything we can see

or touch or hold, including our lives!

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Spirit Day

Hallowe’en: Friday, Oct. 28th our whole school is going to dress up in BLACK and ORANGE. Please do not send your child in his/her costume. In addition, students are not to come to school

with masks, head gear or face paint please.

Forms In September there were several forms that needed to be returned to school (Special Activities, Pu-pil Info Update). Please return these as soon as possible. If you need another copy, please let us

know at the office.

FOOD DRIVE FOR THE ARNPRIOR FOOD BANK MONDAY, OCTOBER 3

rd - FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28

th

If every student would bring in a donation of a canned good or non-perishable food item throughout the month of October, this would be greatly appreciated by the Arnprior Food

Bank. We are having a weekly contest to see which classroom can bring in the most donations

of a specific nature. Week 1: most cans of meat/fish

Week 2: most packages of pasta Week 3: most toiletries, soap, shampoo, toothpaste

Week 4: most cans of vegetables Thank you in advance for your donations and giving generously to the Arnprior Food

Bank.

Fire Prevention Week Fire Prevention Week will be held this year from October 59th to 15th. As a school community, we will be holding 3 fire drills during the fall and 3 fire drills in the spring in order to fulfill the mandate of the Education Act and the Ontario Fire Marshall. At home, you should be checking your smoke de-tectors, discussing your fire protocols with your children and rehearsing what to do in case of a real

fire. It could mean the difference between life and death.

Making Our Schools Safe Places to Learn Our schools are safe places for our students and the adults that work in them. Safe arrival programs,

no unauthorized adults on schoolyard or in hallways, visitor sign-in procedures and fire drills are a few of the numerous activities we engage in to make sure our children are safe.

Lock down procedures (an exercise that is used in the event of an emergency incident that involves all students, staff, and local police) has become a regular safety proce-

dure that is practiced in our school.

During the month of October, St. John XXIII will be practicing this drill with the help of our local police services. The drill will begin with an announcement from the school principal. Staff and students will immediately find an area (classroom, gym or library) and move quickly and silently

to this safe location. Staff and students will remain quiet for the duration of the exercise and no com-munication will be made with the office or other classrooms. At the completion of the drill, the princi-pal will make another announcement indicating that the exercise is complete. Classes and regular

activities will resume.

We will also be practicing drills related to earthquake and tornado safety as these are now policy.

Ryan’s Law, Bill 20

If your child has asthma and requires an action plan in the case of an emergency please contact the office as there is new paperwork to be completed. In addition, your child is legally able to carry

his/her medication on them while at school

ANAPHYLAXIS UPDATE

We continue to educate our families about the importance of not sending food that contains nut/nut products. We ask that families read the labels very carefully and keep foods that have nuts

(peanuts or tree nuts) or say, “may contain traces of nuts” for consumption at home. We realize that you will have to watch carefully when you do your grocery shopping, but this is a small inconven-ience in order to help prevent a potential life-threatening situation at the school. With over 1000

food items per day being consumed at the school, we know that it is impossible to create a perfect-ly safe environment for anaphylactic students but we all need to do our best to make the situation the safest that it can be. Foods purchased commercially at any establishments where nuts are

clearly used in some of the products should not be sent to school. In addition, home baked goods cannot be shared with everyone in the class because there is a possibility of cross contamination

(For example: cakes and cupcakes cannot be brought in to be shared with the class on a birthday). So please remember– keep foods with peanut and nut products at home. If students do bring these items to school, the products will be removed and you will be contacted, either by phone or by note, by a member of the school staff. Read labels carefully and do not send food products to school that

have “may contain traces of nuts on the label”.

Remember, we have some classrooms that need to ensure that parents are not sending shrimp/shellfish due to allergy risks. If your child is in one of these classrooms, he/she would have

already received information about this requirement.

On behalf of the anaphylactic students and their families, we thank you for your efforts.

Head lice: As parents, you should be checking your child’s head on a regular basis and letting the school know if you detect any nits or lice. Children sent home because of lice must be checked at

the office before being allowed to re enter the school. Your child’s head must be free of all nits in or-der to return to school. If we are made aware of a situation in a particular class, we then check all of the heads in that classroom and send home a notice informing parents that head lice has been found

in the classroom. We strive to maintain the confidentiality of the families involved while still informing others of its presence. As parents, it is a good habit to check your child(ren)’s head on a weekly basis as part of

your family routine.

Welcome Area A reminder to all parents concerning our sign in and pick-up policy. Please remember to wait in the welcome area at the main foyer. If you need to pick your child up early, please write a note to the teacher in the agenda. If it is an unexpected change, please let us know at the office and we will buzz down to the classroom to have your child come and meet you at the office. Please call early if there are changes as the end of the day is very hectic. If there is some exceptional circumstance why you need to go to the classroom, you need to let us know at the office, sign in and put on a visitor’s badge, return the badge and

sign out on your way out of the school.

Milk and Food Orders Milk and food forms have been sent out for the month of October via School Cash Online and will start after

Thanksgiving. Watch for Nov. milk & food orders via School Cash Online the 3rd week of Oct.

Cross Country There are several grade 3, 4, 5 and 6 students training for the cross country run being held on Oc-tober 5th (rain date Oct. 6th), at the Arnprior Grove. These runners are showing great determina-tion and strength as they run at lunch time many days a week. Parents are welcome to come and

cheer them on at the Grove area. Thank you Mrs. Boileau & Mrs. Rebertz for coaching.

September Recycling Club Members

A big thank you to the students who assisted with the collection and sorting of all of the recycla-

bles in our school during the month of September.

Chelsea Chartrand, Nixon Miseferi, Clarke Rebertz, Scarlett Rumleskie, Oriana Miseferi, Ken-dall Grant, Nicholas Sawyer, Jer-

emy McCanna, Abby Murree, Mavrick Clifford, Mikaela Mooney

-Lefebvre, Jacob Ralph, Chey-enne White, Ava Hammond,

Liam Flaherty, Bryce Rebertz, Preston Barr, Jade White and

Salyna Greiss.

Welcome We welcome Mrs. Tracey Jeror, ECE, to our newly created JK/SK classroom with Mrs. S. Rebertz.

Greetings from St. John XXIII School Council With a new school year, brings a new group of School Council members. We had a tremendous turnout for our first meeting after the Open House. It is nice to have so many on Council with some returning and many new faces. Everyone brings their own thoughts to the table for discussions and ideas to help sup-port our teachers, students and school community. Anyone is welcome at any meeting, anytime during the year. So feel free to stop by and provide us with some input. This year we are planning on helping with the Kindergarten Outdoor Classroom. Our Kindergarten team is planning ideas it feels the children would like to see and explore in that space. School Council started by helping the Kindergarten Team purchase some toys to play with. We will continue to be in discussions with the Kindergarten Team to best see where we can contribute. We are happy to say that our St. Joseph's Catholic High School in Renfrew will be making us four Buddy Benches for our yard. School Council will be paying for the sup-plies and plant will install the benches in our yard upon completion. We are hoping to get our first fundraiser off the ground in the coming weeks. We are looking at doing the Dominos Discount cards and a Fall Raffle. More on that coming soon. Tracey Jeror, Chair

On Thursday, Sept. 29, St. John XXIII Catholic School participated in the Terry Fox Run. All students had the opportunity to run for 20 minutes as a way of recognizing the efforts Terry

endured on his cancer cam-paign decades ago.

St. John XXIII also wanted to show support by donating

money to the Terry Fox foun-dation. Our goal was to do-nate a toonie for Terry. We

are pleased to announce that we made a grand total of

$714. Thank you to Mrs. Rebertz

for organizing this great event.

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